Top Europeans Quotes

Favorite Europeans Quotes

1. "The great European dream was to diminish militant nationalism. We would all be happy Europeans together. But we are going to see the old monster of militant nationalism being awoken when people realise how little control their politicians have."Author: Antony Beevor

2. "Of course the barbarians' aim of world domination has not escaped the attention of the Europeans, perhaps because unlike us they are closer to the walls."Author: Barbara Amiel

3. "Because of my language and the pantomime with which most Europeans accompany their speech, I was catalogued as a heavy."Author: Bela Lugosi

4. "The idea of a licentious West that many Arabs hold today closely mirrors the view that Europeans had of the Middle East a couple of centuries or more ago."Author: Brian Whitaker

5. "First, we have to find a common vocabulary for energy security. This notion has a radically different meaning for different people. For Americans it is a geopolitical question. For the Europeans right now it is very much focused on the dependence on imported natural gas."Author: Daniel Yergin

6. "Europeans say they are proud of their social fabric, of strong rights for workers and the weak in society."Author: David Korten

7. "China protects the Chinese, America protects the Americans, I don't see why Europe should not protect the Europeans."Author: Dominique De Villepin

8. "For more than a century-and-a-half, Europeans had been killing North American Indians with firewater… Now, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, Canada's pioneer settlers were killing themselves with their own medicine. About Canada. Toronto: Civil Sector Press, November, 2012. Alcohol, North American Indians, Settlers, Canada"Author: Earle Gray

9. "They don't believe in anything either. You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren't interested.""They don't want communism.""They want enough rice," I said. "They don't want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don't want our white skins around telling them what they want.""If Indochina goes--""I know that record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does 'go' mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I'd bet my future harp against your golden crown that in five hundred years there may be no New York or London, but they'll be growing paddy in these fields, they'll be carrying their produce to market on long poles, wearing their pointed hats. The small boys will be sitting on the buffaloes. I like the buffaloes, they don't like our smell, the smell of Europeans."Author: Graham Greene

10. "I beg young people to travel. If you don't have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown. Eat interesting food. Dig some interesting people. Have an adventure. Be careful. Come back and you're going to see your country differently, you're going to see your president differently, no matter who it is. Music, culture, food, water. Your showers will become shorter. You're going to get a sense of what globalization looks like. It's not what Tom Friedman writes about; I'm sorry. You're going to see that global climate change is very real. And that for some people, their day consists of walking 12 miles for four buckets of water. And so there are lessons that you can't get out of a book that are waiting for you at the other end of that flight. A lot of people—Americans and Europeans—come back and go, ohhhhh. And the light bulb goes on."Author: Henry Rollins

11. "They did not, however, infect the air as the Sudanese sun dried them up like mummies; all had the hue of gray parchment, and were so much alike that the bodies of the Europeans, Egyptians, and negroes could not be distinguished from each other."Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz

12. "Long before the Europeans arrived in Africa, the blacks were enslaving each other. They still do," said Valmorain. "Just as whites are enslaving each other, monsieur," the physician countered. "Not all Negroes are slaves, nor all slaves black. Africa is a continent of free people. Millions of Africans are subjected to slavery but many more are free. Slavery is not their destiny, just as is also the case with thousands of whites who are slaves."Author: Isabel Allende

13. "Perhaps Europeans are a bit more skeptic whereas Americans are more believers."Author: Isabelle Huppert

14. "Infectious diseases introduced with Europeans, like smallpox and measles, spread from one Indian tribe to another, far in advance of Europeans themselves, and killed an estimated 95% of the New World's Indian population."Author: Jared Diamond

15. "It invites a search for ultimate causes: why were Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans, the ones to end up with guns, the nastiest germs, and steel?"Author: Jared Diamond

16. "It's striking that Native Americans evolved no devastating epidemic diseases to give to Europeans, in return for the many devastating epidemic diseases that Indians received from the Old World."Author: Jared Diamond

17. "British actors behave like Europeans; they are also extremely well trained."Author: Jean Jacques Annaud

18. "I had to choose between American and British actors, and it didn't take me more than a second to decide: Russians are Europeans and should be played by other Europeans."Author: Jean Jacques Annaud

19. "Very few cinematographers, other than the Europeans, know how to light women like they used to in the old days."Author: Jennifer O'Neill

20. "Several premises shaped the Marshall Plan: that the gravest threat to western interests in Europe was not the prospect of Soviet military intervention, but rather the risk that hunger, poverty, and despair might cause Europeans to vote their own communists into office, who would then obediently serve Moscow's wishes; that American economic assistance would produce immediate psychological benefits and later material ones that would reverse this trend; that the Soviet Union would not itself accept such aid or allow its satellites to, thereby straining its relationship with them; and that the United States could then seize both the geopolitical and the moral initiative in the emerging Cold War."Author: John Lewis Gaddis

21. "This is due partly to the fact that Americans are much better fed than Europeans, and partly to the undeveloped resources of a new country, but more largely to our climate, which acts as a constant stimulus."Author: Josiah Strong

22. "Since the intervention in Afghanistan, we suddenly began to notice when, in political discussions, we found ourselves only among Europeans or Israelis."Author: Jurgen Habermas

23. "Europeans are forever the offspring of Machiavelli, trapped in a historical rollercoaster that can bring us a monarchy-toppling French Revolution and then a few years later Napoleon Bonaparte as emperor."Author: Loretta Napoleoni

24. "Many people profess a belief in the existence of a spiritual realm, often aligning with their religious training or background. (Recent surveys indicate that, on average, between 48 percent and 59 percent of Europeans claim to believe in an afterlife, while between 72 percent and 74 percent of people in the United States assert a belief in life after death.) But when confronted with the loss of a child, a spouse, or another deeply loved person, one may find that his or her belief set is deeply challenged, and some suffer a crisis of faith."Author: Mark Ireland

25. "Mexico, as it was in the 1970s—and isn't now—was my Paris. With Mexicans, Europeans, and Americans I celebrated life and the journey, which took on qualities of a pilgrimage in which every moment was a movable feast and every place was a shrine. Among the intricately carved ruins in the jungle at Palenque, I partook of the Mayan sacrament, the sacred psilocybin mushroom, and there I learned to see."Author: Mason West

26. "We should never forget that Hollywood was built by Europeans, and the old Jewish boys from Eastern Europe."Author: Maximilian Schell

27. "North Americans as a whole need to embrace having clothes altered to their body. I hear it all the time: why do the Europeans always look so good? They have a relationship with their tailor and spend the time and money to make their clothes look their best."Author: Michael Kors

28. "Russians consider themselves civilized Europeans, but have to endure the humiliation of daily encounters with officials that belong in a squalid dictatorship."Author: Oliver Bullough

29. "I am disgusted by the anti-Semitism of many Italians, of many Europeans."Author: Oriana Fallaci

30. "The Europeans had made two promises to the United States if Marshall Plan help was forthcoming. The first promise was maximum self-help on the part of every country; and second, maximum mutual aid."Author: Paul Hoffman

31. "It seems to be that southern Europeans are just more intimate socially, whereas I like a lot of personal space - like, a mile from the nearest person is fine for me."Author: Peter Steele

32. "UKIP is natural party for Eastern Europeans"Author: Przemek Skwirczynski

33. "I decided that Europeans and Americans are like men and women: they understand each other worse, and it matters less, than either of them suppose."Author: Randall Jarrell

34. "We don't mind having sanctions banning us from Europe. We are not Europeans."Author: Robert Mugabe

35. "When World War II erupted, colonialism was at its apogee. The courde of the war, however, its symbolic undertones, would sow the seeds of the system's defeat and demise. [...] The central subject, the essence, the core relations between Europeans and Africans during the colonial era, was the difference of race, of skin color. Everything-each eaxchange, connection, conflict-was translated into the language of black and white. [...] Into the African was inculcated the notion that the white man was untouchable, unconquerable, that whites constitute a homogenous, cohesive force. [...] Then, suddenly, Africans recruited into the British and French armies in Europe observed that the white men were fighting one another, shooting one another, destroying one another's cities. It was revelation, a surprise, a shock."Author: Ryszard Kapuściński

36. "And the big question for the West, of course, and to the Europeans is, what other countries, which were formerly part of the Soviet bloc, should be incorporated into western institutions?"Author: Samuel P. Huntington

37. "This restoration was preceded by a long period of preparation. The Pilgrims and other Europeans were inspired to find this American haven of refuge and thus people this land with honest and God-fearing citizens. Washington and his fellows were inspired to revolt from England and bring political liberty to this land, along with the more valuable treasure of religious liberty so that the soil might be prepared for the seed of the truth when it should again be sown"Author: Spencer W. Kimball

38. "My parents are European immigrants. And I think as Europeans there are so many languages in close proximity that it's part of the culture to try to learn at least one other language. So my parents really encourage it in the house. Chinese would be really great to learn - like Mandarin or Cantonese. Portuguese would be incredible."Author: Stana Katic

39. "Through a strange kind of geographic arrogance, Europeans like to think that the world was a silent, dark, unknown place until they trooped out and discovered it."Author: Tahir Shah

40. "That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans. A European says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with me?" An American says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?"Author: Terry Pratchett

41. "While the hardware of civilization - iron pots, blankets, guns - was welcomed by Native people, the software of Protestantism and Catholicism - original sin, universal damnation, atonement, and subligation - was not, and Europeans were perplexed, offended, and incensed that Native peoples had the temerity to take their goods and return their gods."Author: Thomas King

42. "Canadians tend to be a bit more religious than most Europeans - though not more than the Poles or Ukrainians. Most important, their attitude to immigration and ethnic minorities is more positive than that of most Europeans."Author: Timothy Garton Ash

43. "The Europeans waited so long that they are impacting people who depend on their pensions. We are still early enough to fix it for the next generation. A few states have started scaling back their programs, while others have come hat in hand for billion-dollar federal bailouts."Author: Timothy Griffin

44. "What can the Church do? If she stands by her moral teaching, then she will be seen as standing in judgement over a vast percentage of Europeans."Author: Timothy Radcliffe

45. "Many Europeans are confused by the terms Roma and Romania. They wonder if it is an ethnicity or a nation of 22 million citizens."Author: Traian Basescu

46. "Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has several times made statements to the effect that we Europeans should not cultivate a superficial anti-Americanism. But mine isn't superficial at all.Personally I have nothing against the US itself - it's a beautiful country - it's the people who live there that are the problem.I guess you could say it's the same thing with Bavaria."Author: Volker Pispers

47. "You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for nothing but money. We are nothing for it; the moment we have it we spend it, sometimes well, sometimes ill, but we spend it. Money is nothing to us; it's merely the symbol of success. We are the greatest idealists in the world; I happen to think that we've set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection"."Author: W. Somerset Maugham

48. "Europe and America must act together in the face of evil. It's high time for Americans and Europeans to restore that unity and be able to take actions collectively together."Author: Wesley Clark

49. "I'm not a prophet; I can only use historical reality to come to a view of the future, and my view is that Africa will return to being African and not European. The advent of colonialism was foreign to the country itself, but it will return to what it was before the Europeans arrived."Author: Wilbur Smith

50. "When I left England, my hope of India's conversion was very strong; but amongst so many obstacles, it would die, unless upheld by God. Well, I have God, and His Word is true. Though the superstitions of the heathen were a thousand times stronger than they are, and the example of the Europeans a thousand times worse; though I were deserted by all and persecuted by all, yet my faith, fixed on the sure Word, would rise above all obstructions and overcome every trial. God's cause will triumph. (William Carey, quoted in Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope, Banner of Truth 1971, p 140.)"Author: William Carey